ResearchNick

Today, Brad Lander, rabbis, and other New Yorkers accompanied Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest. For that, they were detained by the Israeli government.  Harvesting olives is not illegal. The occupation is. I am thankful that Brad has been released. But other New Yorkers remain detained, and they must be released immediately. The same Israeli government detaining them has committed a horrific genocide against Palestinians, killing more than 74,000 people over the last few years alone.  The detention of these New Yorkers must end. The occupation must end. The genocide must end.

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss. The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.